Rabid Christian Evangelical Group Jehovah’s Witnesses Banned In Russia

The Christian group Jehovah’s Witnesses has been banned on Russian soil, reported BBC News.

The country’s Supreme Court had ruled in April this year that the Christian denomination was extremist in nature. An appeal was filed against the ruling by the religious group, but it was rejected by the court.

The pamphlets distributed by the group incited hatred against other groups, the justice ministry had argued on the matter.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, which claims to have 175,000 members in Russia, responded to the ruling by calling it the end of religious freedom in the country. The group will now have to shut shop – the headquarters near St Petersburg and 395 local chapters – and hand over all its properties, known as Kingdom Halls, to the Russian government, said the BBC report.

The Jehovah's Witnesses group was founded in the United States in the nineteenth century. Known for going door-to-door in search of new converts, the movement has an estimated eight million adherents worldwide. The word ‘Jehovah’ essentially comes from the latinised version of the Hebrew name for god, ‘Yahweh’.

In India, the Christian denomination cannot lay claim to a large base. Estimates peg the number at 44,000. Because they consider themselves to be citizens of the ‘Kingdom of God’ – which is separate, they claim, from this corrupt world of Satan – and have their set of rules and regulations (They take most of the Bible literally.), they tend not to participate in the political process.

Last year, the group was mulling whether to challenge the Supreme Court order directing people to stand up and sing the national anthem at cinema halls before film screenings. Much earlier, a college professor in Kerala who belonged to the Jehovah’s Witnesses approached the Supreme Court, in the 1980s, citing religion as the reason to allow children not to sing the national anthem at schools.

The group has secured relief from such orders, such as saluting the national flag, in several countries. Russia, however, has other plans.